The recent discussion about hauling gravel prompts me to ask a similar, but different question–actually 2 questions:
I have a set (3) of Cotton Belt (SSW) ACF 70 ton covered hoppers with a 1938 build date. I’m guessing these were used to haul grain, but wonder what other uses they might have been put to in Texas.
I also have several offset 50 ton 2 bay hoppers (not covered) and would like to know if they could/would have been ballast hoppers, or more likely gravel carriers.
I model the T&P and roads it interchanged with post WWII up to 1960. This is likely too late for the Thurber coal mine to still be doing business, although I’m not certain of that. By this time all locomotives were oil burners.
Thurber died in the early '20s, so no coal being loaded there 25-40 years later.
Your cars could be used in conjunction with the cement hoppers to haul aggregates to a large concrete plant - ready-mix, block… Then all you need is a source of (or cars suitable for carrying) sand.
An ORER will tell you what service cars were used for. Another product hauled in covered hoppers was tar from refineries. It was extruded, cooled and chopped into pieces for loading. I used to pass a shingle plant that got tar this way.
In my experience that is not typical of an ORER, they are more the mechanical or physical characteristics of the car not what service its in.
1938 era 70 ton covered hoppers would be hauling cement, potash, gypsum, drilling mud clay (barium sulphate), silica sand, roofing granules, sand blasting grit, Any of those would be common in Texas.
The open top hoppers could carry ballast, gravel, sand, ores, coal or petroleum coke (a byproduct from oil refineries). Crushed stone is very, very big in central and south Texas.
Thanks for all the responses. I sure would like to use them for grain hauling since I don’t have a place to load or deliver gravel/cement on the layout. I’ll figure something out.
By the way, does anybody remember the scene in the 1955ish movie “Picnic” with William Holden and Kim Novak that involves loading a box car with grain? Set in Kansas I think. Pretty neat visual of the way it was done mid-century.
Up through the 1960’s the vast majority of grain was hauled in boxcars. The transition to covered hoppers happened in the 1970’s and there were still a few boxcar grain moves into the early 1980’s.
The early covered hoppers didn’t have enough capacity to make hauling grain worth it. A typical 70 ton coverd hopper carries about 2000 cu ft of commodity while a 40 ton boxcar carries about 3000 cu ft of commodity. Even though the covered hopper can carry more tons, a boxcar can carry more cu ft of a light weight commodity like grain. Plus in the 1950’s and 1960’s there were very few customers set up to load or unload covered hoppers, they were set up to handle boxcars. Some tof the last boxcar grain moves were to Mexico where they didn’t have the ability to unload covered hoppers yet.
Model railroaders are maybe the only guys on earth who watch a Kim Novak movie … to see the grain loading scenes. [;)]
A covered hopper from the '30s/40s would also haul Kaolin and other fine clays, used in papermaking, ceramics, medicines, cosmetics, paints, certain farming uses, pre-LP recordings, and a host of other uses that would simply involve a car being shoved into or nest to a factory building rather than needing an elaborate outdoor industry to accomodate them. So if you have any kind of industrial siding you could think about a factory that needs powdered materials such as Kaolin.